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Sept. 17, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:07
Phil Giraldi : Intel, Assassinations, and war Crimes.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, September 18th, 2024.
Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, a pleasure, my dear friend.
I want to talk to you about intelligence, the intel community, assassinations and war crimes, and we will get to that.
First, to the latest on Ukraine.
When you and I spoke last, Having monitored the words of wisdom of Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State of the United States, in the presence of President Zelensky, former President Zelensky, and British Foreign Minister David Lammy, we had every indication that by the end of the week, the United States government and the government of Great Britain would have authorized the Ukrainians.
To use British and American long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia.
Something happened.
Something happened that caused an angry President Biden and an embarrassed Prime Minister Starmer to commence their meeting with Biden, admonishing reporters to stop asking him questions and wait until he made his statement.
Brief statement saying there would be no announcement on long-range missiles on Friday.
And there still hasn't been one.
What do you think happened?
Well, I think this is probably good news that Joe Biden got cold feet with the election coming up.
And the idea of maybe going to war with nuclear-armed Russia with those hypersonic missiles that they possess suddenly didn't seem to be a real good idea if you wanted to hold on to the White House.
So I don't know.
I mean, obviously this is something they're sitting on.
There were, as you noted correctly, The initial reports that were coming out about the meeting with Starmer and so on and so forth was going to be a celebration of giving Zelensky, first of all, the British would give him the missiles and the U.S. would be supporting the action and taking the offensive to Russia.
But it didn't happen.
So I think that's good news, but I don't think it's a dead issue.
Must have been people inside the White House or very close to it, maybe at the Pentagon, who were leaking information to some of the reporters that were reporting what they had been told, that this was a done deal.
So I think we shouldn't hold our breath for too long.
So let me tell you where your colleagues stand on this.
Colonel Wilkerson and Scott Ritter believe that the Defense Department sidelined Blinken and Sullivan and basically said to the White House, probably in more diplomatic terms than I'm going to describe it now, forget about it.
We cannot deal with him if he's going to send And we're not prepared for it.
And Biden angrily accepted what they said.
Is a little more subtle in his view on this and believes that Putin's words were so clear, certain, and unambiguous that even Joe Biden decided to pay attention to them.
Now, in support of what Scott Ritter and Larry Wilkerson believe, and consistent with your statement, There hasn't been a public statement by Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan since Friday, since it was obvious that they were countermanded by the president.
Do you think that the DOD told the White House, when Vladimir Putin says something, he means what he says?
Well, I don't know if they quite would have put it that way.
Because I don't think these people are deep enough thinkers to come out with that kind of formulation.
But I do rather suspect that they might have gone to him and, speaking in one syllable words, explained to him that this would be catastrophic for the United States.
They just might have had enough integrity to do that.
And that kind of fits with the other arguments too.
I mean, you know, this is a, We don't know exactly what was said and it looks like it went a certain way and we're hypothesizing what the reasons might be.
But I would still advise caution because we have not had that statement and we don't have any kind of explicit information yet that's been leaked that would tell us what exactly the line was that was used and how How effective it was in terms of making this a dead deal.
If it really is a question of, look, they would destroy us, then that's a pretty decisive argument.
But I'm kind of holding my breath.
Where is the CIA on this?
Where's Bill Burns on all this?
And as you answer that, educate us on, doesn't the DOD have its own intelligence service?
That doesn't have to rely on the CIA?
Yeah, and in theory the two intelligence services exchange everything as they do their intelligence, as they do with the State Department.
And, you know, so it's interesting.
There are a lot of people kind of out there saying that the CIA is maybe the agency that is Running these wars in a real sense.
I don't know.
I think that would be very dangerous for the agency and its leadership.
Now, we're talking about its leadership.
We're not talking about guys like me working around recruiting spies.
We're talking about people who are making big policy decisions that are involving warfare and nuclear warfare.
So it's easy to say, oh yeah, CIA did it.
But there are a lot of players in Washington.
And let's not leave out even like the think tanks that have a strong voice at defense and also at intelligence and also at the White House.
Let's not forget that there are a lot of players in this game, many of whom have secondary motives like the defense contractors who...
But on the other hand, if they can keep the pot boiling and the money flowing, this is something that's in their interest.
Here's the statement by President Putin.
And I'm just wondering if Joe Biden listened to it.
Maybe Lloyd Austin sat him down in front of a computer screen and said, Mr. President, watch this.
Cut number five, Phil, Chris.
It is not about allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not.
It is about making a decision about whether NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not.
If the decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine.
This is their direct participation and this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.
This will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are fighting Russia.
And if this is so, Bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.
Do you think that Joe Biden watching that came to the conclusion he's not a monster, he's not a war criminal, he's not a butcher, whatever else Biden has called him, he's serious?
Well, first of all, I wish we had somebody in the senior position who could speak that articulately.
About the dangers that are coming out of Pandora's box here in terms of this war escalating into a nuclear exchange probably very quickly.
And yeah, you know, I think if Biden saw it that way, but you know, the Secretary of Defense has not exactly been anything but a patsy on all this stuff.
Right, right.
Yeah, so I kind of suspect it could not have been him.
Who maybe made the case to Biden if indeed that was done.
It might be someone else.
I hate to give any credit to Sullivan or anyone like that, but there might be someone in the White House or around the White House with two brain cells left to rub together who might have been able to make this case and convince.
Biden, who certainly is in a vulnerable position in many senses, that this is the right way to go, which means not going that way.
Thank you.
Is Ukraine near collapse?
Is it limping toward Election Day?
Well, it depends who you listen to.
If you listen to some of our esteemed senators, that they've resumed the ability to take the offensive.
Now, other people that I trust much more than those people, and has virtually no trained soldiers left in the equation.
And this means that it's a question of Russia holding back because it wants to not raise its own casualty count by taking the offensive and doing this methodically.
And I suspect, again, that's what some of your people have been saying, that this is more what's going on right now.
And it's a question of when does Putin intend to finish it?
I would imagine by the end of the year.
Does the president get different intelligence advice?
From CIA, from NSA, from DEA, not DEA, DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency?
Or do they coordinate and speak to him in one voice?
Well, I certainly have to say that I don't have a real insight into how it works right now.
I know how it worked when I was in the government.
Let's extrapolate from how it worked then.
Yeah, well, how it was then, all this stuff was carefully...
All this stuff was carelessly coordinated.
It doesn't mean that there were different points of view coming from the different agencies, but they were pretty sure to talk and be on the same page for the big issues.
And that's the way it was.
So everybody had a point of view.
Everybody had a certain independent value.
But at the same time, there was a lot of coordination.
My impression now is that it's all coordination by certain cadres at the top of all these agencies and institutes that basically are very politicized and are very involved in protecting their political flanks as they move along.
Over to Israel.
Is assassination a war crime?
Well, it depends on how you do it.
I would think it comes back down to what is a just war doctrine.
Without getting into the just war doctrine, let's say you do what the Israelis did yesterday and explode 3,000 pagers in the pockets, pocketbooks, front car seats.
Well, that obviously is a war crime.
It's by definition a war crime.
What I was going to suggest is that if someone were an imminent threat to you and you had the capability of taking him out, that might be considered a gray area.
But this was purely an Israeli action to kill a lot of people.
Obviously premeditated, preplanned.
They must have had someone in the plant in Budapest that was putting these things together that was on their payroll, whether it was explosives or just something that somehow managed to detonate batteries and that kind of thing is, I think at this point, difficult to say.
But the fact is that this was a slaughter.
And of course, it's continued today.
There are other electronic devices that are exploding in Lebanon and Syria, even as we speak.
So it's a deliberate attempt to raise the ante in the war that Israel is now talking about undertaking to create a buffer zone.
Up to the Latani River in Lebanon, which we've seen before in the 1980s.
And for this to do this, they have guarantees from the Democrat leadership that the United States will be there to defend them.
So this is kind of a word game, and it's a fraud, and it's an atrocity, it's a major, This wasn't genocide scale, but, you know, it's the same sort of thing.
So, Colonel McGregor, Colonel Wilkerson, Scott Ritter, all believe that General Carrilla, the commander of CENTCOM, who visited Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign and Defense Minister Galland twice last week.
Was saying to them, we will back you in defense, but if you go into Lebanon, you're on your own.
Do you agree with that?
Well, I hope it's true, but I don't know that.
Do any of these people that have been suggesting that have any...
Colonel McGregor is relying on public sources.
But the three of them on this show came to essentially the same conclusion.
I mean, that might mean a sea change in thinking if in the same week Joe Biden, albeit reluctantly, said to Zelensky, no, you're not going to strike Russia, and said to Netanyahu, no, we're not going to help you invade Lebanon.
That's fascinating.
Before you answer, This is the last thing Netanyahu wants to hear from a recently retired Major General of his own.
Well, except Netanyahu is also getting contrary support from the people in his group.
So it runs two ways.
But to go back to this question of whether our General Kurila was actually there to tell them to back off, I would like to know what their sources are.
I have seen the United States roll over on its back.
Too many times in these confrontations with Israel where everything is right on the side of what the U.S. is asserting, but they still roll over.
It's a question of who controls our government.
We've discussed this before.
I am afraid that certainly the Biden administration and Donald Trump will come up absolutely gutless if confronted by Israel starting World War III, either in Lebanon or in Iran.
And the U.S. would be right in there with them supporting our good friend and ally Israel.
That's what I'm afraid of.
Let's get back to the slaughter in Lebanon.
These 3,000 pagers exploding and another 200 or 300 today.
And they exploded in Syria also.
Right.
Why do it?
What military advantage is there to it?
Doesn't it just infuriate your enemies?
Well, sure it does.
But the advantage of infuriating your enemies, as we can also cite in the case of Hamas, is that you get maybe the enemies doing something provocative and you get your war.
And in this case, Hamas, You get your war with the United States as backing you and doing the heavy work.
Of course, there's the Latani River issue in Lebanon, which Israel has always coveted because it's a water source in an arid part of the world.
And this has always been seen as like another place like the Golan Heights to acquire.
Can you imagine if something like that happened here, if the Chinese caused it?
This is an iPhone, a regular iPhone.
I rely on it for everything.
And parts of it are not made in the U.S. But can you imagine if the Chinese put some sort of a device in here that allows them to trigger a code in Beijing and it exploded and it happened thousands and thousands of times?
What would we do?
We'd go to war.
Right.
And the American people would support it.
So these are the tricks of the trade.
You create situations and you manipulate the situation in such a way to create a narrative that basically lets you do what you want.
And there's been a lot of this going on.
Switching subjects to a matter about which you are about to publish.
A terrific historical, philosophical and analytical piece.
We'll start off with cut number 17. I think it's important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in Direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016.
But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda.
And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial.
So you have the Yale Law School graduate, former First Lady, former U.S. Senator, former Secretary of State, former Democratic nominee for President of the United States, attacking fundamentals.
We're not out at the margins here.
Fundamentals of freedom of speech, political speech, as to which the Supreme Court has said, There are no limits.
There can be no restraints on political speech.
This lady, whose husband was the President of the United States, wants people like you and me and the millions who watch us and agree with us to be in legal jeopardy because of what we say about the government?
That's precisely what she's saying.
And this, of course, is the product of the same thinking, the same administration, Democratic administration.
Which was trying to create the Disinformation Bureau in the Department of Homeland Security, and that was going to have criminal and civil consequences for people who were deemed to have uttered disinformation.
Now, what constitutes disinformation in this case is anything that disagrees with what the White House is saying.
Correct.
Correct.
When Attorney General Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray announced the indictments of Dmitry Symes and Mrs. Symes, both American citizens as well as Russian citizens, indicted for what they said in Russia on Russian television.
Beyond me, how that can be an American offense, but that's up to the DOJ to persuade a court.
Chris Wray, the director of the FBI, specifically used the phrase propaganda.
Phil, there is no such thing as propaganda.
You can say whatever you want about the policies, the personnel, the politics of the government.
That's why we have a First Amendment, to keep the government out of the business, out of the business.
This is not me.
This is the Supreme Court.
Out of the business of evaluating the content of speech.
Well, absolutely.
And you could turn this thing on its head.
You say that every time the government lies about something, and in the course of the last three and a half years, certainly you could find probably thousands of things that the Biden administration and its toadies have lied about.
They are the ones that are throwing out propaganda.
That's false information, isn't it?
Yes.
So maybe they should be the ones that do a little self-examination and voluntarily submit themselves to the legal system.
That's not what they have in mind.
Here's FBI Director Ray at the press conference that I mentioned from last week.
Our investigation revealed that since at least last year, RT has used people living and working inside the US To facilitate contracts with American media figures to create and disseminate Russian propaganda here.
The content was pitched as legitimate independent news when, in fact, much of it was created in Russia by RT employees who work for the Russian government.
I say, so what?
The test of an idea is its ability to be accepted in the marketplace of ideas, not whether or not it pleases the government.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's what's so ridiculous about these arguments.
The thing is that if I have a different opinion on what's going on in Ukraine and Russia than you, we both should have the freedom to be able to explain ourselves and support our viewpoints in a reasonable way.
And here we have the director of the FBI working for this gang of hoodlums in the White House, and he's coming out and spouting this sort of thing, giving it legal sanction, that what we're doing, gee, is we're not punishing you for your views or for your expression of your freedom of speech.
We're punishing you because we think you're wrong.
I don't know where or how this will end, but I have a feeling it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Phil, thank you very much.
Where's Rupert today?
He's with his mom.
They're watching television.
Okay.
Somebody wrote in, tell Phil that Rupert might be a CIA asset.
I don't think so.
Not in that household.
He certainly could be.
Give Angela and Rupert our best.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Always a pleasure.
No matter what we're talking about, I hope we can do it again next week.
Will do.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Got to have a sense of humor with all of this.
It's terrible.
Terrible what's going on.
Coming up at 4 o 'clock, Aaron Maté on more of this.
Do you think Phil was animated about Mrs. Clinton?
Wait until you see Aaron.
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